Thursday, September 15, 2011

Why I'm Too Spacey for My Job

Subtitled: And why I pray a position in advertising opens up soon.

The assignment was to call 8 stores - four from each division, and ask if they had any problems with lotus notes related to the deployment of IE8. This all made sense Wednesday Evening when my Mr. Supervisor and Mr. Director gave me the assignment. It even made sense when Mr. Director said I should call the stores that already called the help desk since we knew they had problems.

The next morning, it did not make sense at all. "I'm not a morning person." I thought, and went to talk to the director of the home division's help desk. "Why am I calling stores that opened up tickets at the help desk? I mean if they already opened a ticket, and I call back and don't have a solution, that will just make them mad." She agreed.

So I went and talked to Mr. Director. "Why am I calling stores that opened up tickets at the help desk? I mean if they already opened a ticket, and I call back and don't have a solution, that will just make them mad?" It had worked with Help Desk Director.

Mr. Director just laughed and said, "You don't want to make the calls, do you?" Not to be thought of as trying to get out of work, I hurriedly said I had no problem with making the calls and somehow ended up back at my desk staring at my notebook, which said, "Ask the stores if they had any problems with lotus notes....etc."

I will not call help desk stores, I thought. I will only call non help desk calls.

So I made my list and chirpily called two stores from each of the four divisions. "You are on my list of stores who had their Internet Browser upgraded. Have you had a chance to use the internet yet today? Did you have any issues?"

"No issues ma'am."

"Ok thank you for your time!"

Soon the task was done and I was feeling very good about it as I sent my summary to Mr. Director and Mr. Supervisor, which included one store which said their some app was now blocked.

Mr. Director walked into my office later, thanked me for the report, and said, "So what did the stores say about lotus notes?"

How could I say that I forgot the only question I was supposed to ask them? "Fine." I said. "They're fine." After all, none of them had reported any problems with lotus notes.